Silhouettes and Shadows
by tartan robes
Summary: "When they meet, they are old." A series of drabbles encompassing the life of Charles Carson and Elsie Hughes. Slight AU.


_i. _

When they meet, they are old. They have lives already lived and chains wrapped around their ankles; only she has cut hers lose and he drags them around behind him. His steps are silent, but always sinking with a singing weight. He doesn't complain. They are old in the way that they are no longer bright eyed and cheery. Children's sounds – whimpers and giggles and the like – have all been outgrown. Their bones don't yet creak and they still walk with spirit, but their hearts have ripened and matured, shed their glowing skin. She thinks this means that life is behind her. A home and a husband and fair-haired farm children, she thinks herself too old for all of it. He is eight years her senior and filled with eight times the shame, which seeps into every new wrinkle.

Every morning, they wake up with new lines in her skin and as she tries to trace the patterns back – where did the strokes break? where did she change? – he tries to scrub them off his palms.

_ii. _

That is not exactly accurate. They do not meet so much as fall into place. In the same way the dinner gong is always rung and the linens are always stripped and changed, somewhere in the lapses between duty and servitude they line up, side by side. She is not the first face who greets him when he enters the estate's back door, nor is she the first face that catches his eye. He barely notes her at his first breakfast. But, on his second day, he sees her silhouette standing in the doorway. Her posture is more rigid than any lady's, her head is held a fraction lower – proud, but aware of her place. He always angles his own lower, never questioning his position. Her hair is full of pins and she rests her wrists by the windowsill, the housemaid's apron lit yellow in the afternoon light.

She doesn't turn her head when he comes up behind her, shadowing the window pane. His proximity is unprofessional, he knows. (He's studied every rule five times over, follows every procedure. He will be a good servant. In servitude, he will find his redemption. This is the role, he tells himself at night, that he was born to play.) They breathe in unison as the car ambles up the driveway and a young Lady Rosamund emerges, Lord Painswick helping her out. Only the butler comes out to escort them; there is no need to make a show. She watches the Painswicks carefully, having yet to acknowledge him, watches the way Lady Rosamund's heels click against the steps and the way her husband laughs as she pauses to whisper something in his ear.

And then she turns to him, her lips pulled back in a wide smile. She looks at him as if they have a secret now and perhaps they do. It is his first interaction with Elsie Hughes; it is their first comfortable silence.

It is not their last.

_iii. _

He doesn't think laughter suits him, a valet in a prestigious house where guests walk in lace and drink with fingers encased in layers of gold and silver. But he laughs with her. They walk down the hallway, he always one step behind her (for a lord's man is always on display and a lady's housemaid is to be nothing more than a fleeting shadow), and talk easily. She makes jokes and quips and cutting remarks – and he laughs, always. A sound deep and low, one he thought he banished from himself ages before. She talks in an accent that is full of rolling hills and somewhere far away. Everything about her is foreign; everything about her screams of home.

One month in, he takes her dancing. Or, rather, she takes him. It's most improper, a woman taking a man out, so he tries to rearrange the details in his mind. But then he fears that if he scrambles too far, he will forget the feeling on her hand in hers, the way the town looks at sunset, the shaking of her hands as she poured them yet another glass. She looked up at him while they were in orbit and for one second, when she leaned in closer and smiled that secret smile, he thought perhaps he had known her all his life. "You're very good at this," she had said and he had looked away.

On the way back, however, he knew he hadn't. It begun to rain and she begun to shiver and so he took off his coat and held it above the two of them. He may have heard her laugh, but he had only squinted in the darkness, calculating the steps back to Downton.

She had said then, "Are you always this serious, Charles?"

"I have to be."

"And why, pray tell, is that?"

"I have to make up for the past."

There had been a pause; he had seen her chew on her lip briefly, considering.

"Did you do something awful, then? Or was it just a loss."

"I lost myself to something awful."

"Well, at least you aren't a murderer," and she had smiled, the melancholy in his expression worrying her, "I wouldn't fancy a second dance with a murderer."

She had reached up and her fingers had just skimmed his, damp from the drenched curtain above their heads.

"Lessen your burden," she had said, but it had been an order (she was very good at those), "tell me of this_ terrible_ past."

"You'll think less of me."

"I will think no such thing. Tell me your past, Charles, and free yourself from it."

He had hesitated and so she had continued, "I'll remember it for you."

"I couldn't ask you to carry that weight."

"You didn't ask, I offered. That makes all the difference."

His coat doesn't keep out the rain and by the time they reach the back door, they are soaked and heavy with water. But for the first time since leaving the stage, he feels lighter.

_iv. _

The first time, she had insisted on having the lights off. In the darkness, they could forget the lines and forms and figures. They could forget who they were and, in turn, leave the guilt behind. If they did not see each other, they were not doing anything with each other. If they didn't see each other, then it was nothing more than a fantasy. (He had felt her smile against his neck and this time he had understood the secret, smiled back.) He wasn't sure if she loved him and he wasn't always sure if he loved her, but they both loved their professions, their titles. So long as they did not see one another, it wasn't the valet lying with the head housemaid. They were just two shadows in the dark, clumsy and old and so full of life.

The first time, he had been blind and so he had listened instead of watched. He heard wonderful sounds: hooks unfastening and buttons sliding free and her hands reaching around her back, laces coming undone. He had heard her breathe – breathe with none of her morning restraint, without the corset sucked around her waist.

He had never heard a sound more lovely.

(She never asked him if there was another, if someone had come before; he never asked if he was her first. He didn't want to know. He wanted to be her only; she wanted to be his. It was enough.)

Later, he heard her pant and much later, dream. But never once did she beg; she never said a single word. Instead, she held one hand along the side of his face and the other over his mouth. (If they didn't say anything, it wasn't them.)

And so he could not tell her he loved her, but he never needed to.

She heard him breathing against her ear, between smiles, and she understood.

_v. _

Like most things, they are promoted almost simultaneously, one never far behind the other. They find their pantries made for them; they fit into their chairs like lost jigsaw pieces. With their promotion comes marriage. She becomes _Mrs. _Hughes and he _Mr. _Carson. They marry the same thing, but not each other, become the husband and wife of the estate.

He takes it seriously. Though she has the key to his room fastened around her waist, for the first season, he refuses to touch her, to think of her in any other way. (This rule does not apply at night, when he tosses alone in his own bed, thinking how only one wall separates them and how easy it would be to touch her now.) She doesn't argue or cry or sniffle (these are emotions not becoming of a housekeeper), but touches his hand once and then they are the friends they always were again. She sits with him in his parlour and they go over rotas and wines; she finds intimacy in their innocent conversation and is patient. She believes he is worth the wait. And if he is not, her position certainly was.

But then a Christmas ball comes and goes and, as she twirls in the arms of others, he remembers a rainy night when she was only his. (He tells himself, too, that he is not jealous. Not at all. Not at the way she laughs with the footman or smiles at Lord Grantham.) This time, he asks her to dance. He spins her around the floor and they continue their dance down the stairs and into her pantry, where they fall against the wall and he kisses her – again and again and again.

_vi. _

After that night, the sound of a key turning a lock becomes his favourite noise; she memories the layout of his room.

_vii. _

Still, they say nothing of it in the morning (she has always left his bed before he wakes). It makes him wonder at times if it's all just a fantasy.

That is, until the one night, lights still off, he hears her voice in his ear – and all the rolling hills and summer days: "_Charles_." It's soft and foreign, a stronger endearment than any he's ever heard before. It's a slip of her tongue, a mistake. It makes it real, makes it all so very real. He can no longer deny what they are doing; she can no longer deny what they are.

When he wakes up, he finds her still in his arms. He sees her for the first time, the light rushing in. He feels her sides for her corset, feels her hips for the windchime of keys. She wears none of it this morning and lying there, completely exposed and more awake than he has been in years, he cannot articulate a single regret.

_viii. _

For the most part, they are serious. They wear professionalism like laurels in their hair and neither would have it any other way. They are married to the estate; they tell themselves this means it comes first. (Though, of the two of them, she is the one who lapses more often, dreams of other lives – but always with him by her side.) They are knights in the mornings, metal armour and steely looks. They are titles in the morning and humans at night. They come alive after the second glass of wine, when he slumps back behind his desk and she leans over it, kisses him quietly, building bridges between their worlds.

_ix. _

There are times, though, in the morning when she smirks at him or his leg finds hers under the table or he raises his eyebrows and she laughs back at him, knowingly, and he thinks maybe he is not two separate men, but just one fortunate one.

_x. _

They fight too; decades in, it is an inevitability. Sometimes she dreams of a farmhouse, a shop, a factory job. A son or a daughter or maybe both. He cannot imagine any of it; he has all he wants. Sometimes she finds his silence frustrating; she longs for answers even when they may not match. But he is so used to her, his constant and his comfort, he has no wish to acknowledge any fault lines. She sees herself, in those silences, as his second wife. He is married to Downton and she is but his mistress.

When Joe Burns returns, full of the promises he is too afraid to make, he realizes he has no claim over her.

_xi. _

But she stays. He doesn't ask her why. Just like before, they ignore it. They are older now. She is less frequent in her visits to his room, but he holds her in his pantry always and she never leaves before leaning over that desk, kissing him time and time again.

_xii. _

Christmases come and go and he finds himself opening her pantry door once more, helping her push the pins in her hair.

"I'm not quite sure how you do this," he mumbles as she readjusts his handiwork.

"I thought you watched me in the mornings."

"Not your hair," he admits, grudgingly.

She pushes the final pin in.

He extends an arm, "You look lovely,"

"_Lovely _is a word for countesses and ladies."

"Are you not my lady?"

"I'd rather be your queen," she smirks slightly, "but then, were I your queen, you would listen to me for once."

"I listen to you!" He mocks offense and she bats his shoulder lightly.

"Not in the mornings, clearly."

They go their separate ways once the music starts. But always, she looks over Lord Grantham's shoulder and he over Lady Grantham's, watching one another. As they have always done – long before she was his lady or he her knight – they move perfectly in sync.

_xiii. _

A war happens and he finds it harder to hold her. Somehow, she's farther away, more adapt to the new world than he can ever hope to be. He presses up against her at night, refuses to let her go. He says he needs her and she kisses his jaw, shakes her head. Still, she never pulls away.

_xiv. _

She sits by his bed when his heart gives out and scolds him even while he sleeps.

"You never listen to me," she whispers, adjusting and readjusting his hair, pushing stray locks back.

"If you loved me," and she says this only when he is sleeping, because their love is unspoken (and she wonders if this makes it stronger or weaker), "you would listen to me."

_xv. _

There comes a time when he thinks his love as a father is more important. She does not say a word. They are older still and, when you reach a certain age, she supposes the children come first. She doesn't protest. She reverts back to being his friend; his happiness is her only concern.

Nothing matters but it.

_xvi. _

_I love you. _

She supposes that, had she the nerve to say it out loud, he would never even have considered leaving.

_xvii. _

_I love you_.

He never says it, but the very thought tethers him to her.

_xviii. _

Once she's sure she has no more tears to shed (and this realization takes months to make), she takes his arm, lets him walk her back to William's grave.

"So small," she mumbles, "and so alone."

His hand tightens around hers.

"Do you think," she says, "they'd lay us down side by side?" It would be like their lives, she thinks. Paralleled and perfectly in sync. It would be like falling asleep any other night; a single wall separating her bed from his.

_xix. _

She forgets how many decades its been, how long she's known him. The skirts change and the ladies pin their hair up differently, different colours sweep through the dining rooms, different guests are entertained. Always, she sits in his pantry. Sometimes with a novel, sometimes with needles clicking, pulling the yawn together. Under the glow of oil lamps, they stare at each other in silence, trace the maze of new lines and wrinkles with their eyes. Lines they share and mirror, lines he never tries to scrub away. Her hand reaches out to him, cradles his jaw with her fingertips. She knows the contours of his face – old and new – even when she closes her eyes. She knows him. Perhaps she always has.

They will write stories, she thinks, of the great loves of lords and ladies, of their scandals and their passions. They will overlook, they will all overlook, what exists here, in this room, in the silence.

She doesn't mind it; she knows the truth.

_xx. _

Her fingers get older, the needles clink slower.

He looks at her one night: "I'd be lost with out you."

She says nothing.

"I mean it," he says.

"I know Charles." A pause. "You mean everything you say."

She doesn't look up from her lap and so he grabs her hand, kisses her temple.

"I love you," he says.

He means it. He always has.

_xxi. _

They never got retired, never properly considered it. They were married to the estate; they could never properly leave it. They loved their titles as much as they loved each other. They could never leave it.

_xxii. _

They stop being old and start embodying it instead. The housemaids quake beneath Old Mrs. Hughes' pointed glare; the shadow of Old Mister Carson engulfs every footman.

Mister Carson lives well longer than everyone says he should. He gets up every morning and, when he opens the door, she is always on the other side. (She is often too tired to open the door herself, to wake up in his arms. So he walks her to hers. Either way, she is the first and last thing he sees. He thinks that is most the important part.) But Elsie Hughes grows old. She puts pins in grey hair and then white. Her steps become slower, softer. They hold each other's arms openly, supporting one another. It becomes harder to see ahead, but clearer to see the past. Neither complain. He holds her tighter.

She gets sick and laughs at him when he sits next to her bedside. She jokes about how he almost lost his heart twice years and years ago, questions if he still has one left. He assures her he does, kisses her hand. (He has a heart and it will break if she goes.) She holds his hand, remarks that they never had any rings. Does it matter now? He asks her and she tells him it never did.

Her voice becomes smaller and she tells him to sing to her. He says he doesn't sing. She says she knows he does. He asks her what kind of song and she only smiles. A secret passes between them. He whispers the melody into her ear.

It becomes tiring to open her eyes. She curls her fingers inward and he creaks under the covers with her. Her hands twist around his neck; she rests her head over his heart. He thinks of how they never knew. Suspected maybe, gossiping under-servants and arched upper-class eyebrows, but always they have been their own greatest secret. He doesn't know whether this is the punchline or the part of the play where the ladies burst into tears. He doesn't know; he ignores the dampness on his cheeks.

He remembers the first time he heard her breathe and he hears it again, the freedom, the strings coming undone.

And then it stops. Her eyes are shut and her lips are open and her hands are around his neck.

He closes his eyes, holds her tighter than ever before.

_xxiii. _

When he closes his eyes, he begins falling backwards and his life spirals, more carefree than he ever was, in the darkness.

A war. Her knitting. The glow of oil lamps. _You are my lady_. Christmas and Christmas and Christmas again. Her hand in his. The first night and the smell of rain. Her leaning in as he twirled her – again and again and again. A silhouette in a yellow window. A secret smile.

They find them in the morning, wrapped in one another. They didn't die at the same time; that would have been absurd, impractical, but wherever Elsie Hughes' heart rested, Charles Carson's was never far behind it. (The youngest of servants later say Old Carson only stayed around so long, clawed his way through an extra decade of life, to see her off. They think it romantic.) Across the floorboards, down the hall, shadows stretch through the hallways, remembering a time when a head housemaid breezed through them – always followed by the valet, he always one step behind.

* * *

_I meant to write other things, but these drabbles happened instead. So have this in the meantime, I guess. Hopefully it all flows nicely enough together. _


End file.
